Point of No Return

This play (being my earliest) is possibly dated by having a ‘Toy Story’ theme. It might be worth asking the students if Toy Story still holds any relevance for them, and, if not, thinking about a more current alternative (there would need to be a fair amount of re-working, however!). Otherwise, it might be simplest to locate it in a particular year or time, at the top of the play, with a preamble from one of the ex-students (or an adult voice, possibly in voice-over), along the lines of – “This is the story of something weird that happened a few years after me and my friends had left school. We found out it was about to be demolished, so one night in the summer holidays we got drunk and broke back in. For a minute it was as if time had stood still, as if we were still a bunch of mouthy year nines, back in a time when Ronaldo still played for United, and Toy Story was on at the cinema. But that’s not the weird thing.”Synopsis:

A motley bunch of drunken teenagers break into their old, now derelict school at night, shortly before it’s demolished. It is dark, the place vandalised and spooky. There is the usual banter and loud-mouthed reminiscing. They find the fuse box. Amazingly the lights still work. One of the boys, Dean, finds an old ventolin inhaler and ‘spacer’. This provokes a strange, sharp reaction in one of the girls, Misha, who demands to have it. At that point the lights flick off. There is brief panic while they turn their phone torches on; even more panic when all their phone torches suddenly flick off. A strange underscore starts, voices fade. Suddenly the lights flick back on. Misha finds herself alone, surrounded by weirdly masked ‘ghost’-children in school uniform. Another younger girl appears with no mask. She is expressionless. A disembodied voice (that of the head-teacher) speaks to her, and as she responds, Misha realises that the girl is herself, when younger, on her first day as newcomer to the school. At that point the narrative flashes back. The mess disappears, the chaos is righted. It is a functioning school once more. The ex-students appear and are replaced by their younger selves. A school bell sounds, other students appear rushing to their class-rooms. Another newcomer, Toby, a boy of below average height, is lost. Two younger girls direct him to the office. A class-room appears, the students people it, tease each other, until interrupted by their teacher’s voice. Toby and his fellow newcomer, Misha are introduced to the class. Toby gives his ‘spacer’ to the teacher for safe-keeping. This provokes a private resolution amongst the others to nickname him ‘Buzz’ (due to a tenuous ‘spacer-spaceship’ connection). As the teacher drones on and the students day-dream, we learn that one of the class, Harry, is infatuated with Young Jade (if allowed they would become the classic ‘golden couple’). It is Harry whom Toby is placed next to and who is given the role of shepherding him. From then on Toby becomes an annoyingly sweet-natured mill-stone round Harry’s neck, endlessly trying to arrange to meet up and chat, watch him play football (Toby isn’t allowed to do sports as his asthma is too severe). The action intercuts with visitations from the chorus-like ‘ghost-children’, who enact moments/memories where one of their number suffered a humiliation or trauma- one losing control of her bladder in an assembly, another having his father’s violent treatment of him discovered and made public, another being ostracised for having bad breath. Meanwhile, Young Misha is discovering the other girls’ friendship dynamics, and subtly breaking them up. She is manipulative, fearless, seemingly without parents, happy to break school rules, wear make-up, drawing Jade into her web, and splitting her from her erstwhile friends, Jess and Leanne, whilst slyly mocking Harry for having acquired a shadow- Toby. She introduces Jade to proper ‘men’ at clubs, so that Harry feels gauche and immature by comparison. The action intercuts with the journey of the older ex-students from night-club to derelict school (before the action starts). We learn that they broke in at Misha’s instigation, and that before they left the club, she had been talking to an unknown man. Back in flash-back, Young Misha’s malign influence has caused the behaviour of the rest of the class to deteriorate. They start to actively tease Toby, who finally has enough and rushes out. After a bout of physical bullying (abstracted into a dance- “I get a kick out of you”) Harry (feeling guilty for having tried to brush Toby off), offers to meet up with Toby. Later, the rest of the class find this out, and turn on Harry. He loudly denies liking Toby, just as Toby enters the class-room. After class, Toby, crushed by Harry’s outburst, goes off. It becomes clear that he’s decided to play football, which Harry knows is dangerous for him. Harry rushes off to find him, but Toby is too upset/angry to stop. It brings on a fully fledged asthma attack. He asks for his inhaler. Harry races back to the class-room to find it, rooting through the teacher’s desk. Behind him, Young Misha appears, holding it. She toys with Harry, not letting him have it, wasting precious seconds. Finally Harry is allowed to take it, but it’s too late. As teachers, students, paramedics rush to and fro in panic, Toby appears elsewhere, still, quiet. He says: ‘To infinity and beyond’ and then is gone. Back in the derelict school, Harry appears before the grown-up Misha. He gives her the inhaler and spacer, then disappears, whilst Misha asks for forgiveness. The lights flick back on and all is normal, the other ex-students as they were. Slowly they recall what had happened when they were younger, and Misha reveals that man she was talking to in the club was Harry, grown up now, but still haunted by the events, still ‘stuck’ in the old school. She explains she wanted to come here, before it was knocked down, to ‘free’ him. Sobered, the older students make ready to leave, and as they do, turn back into their younger selves, their echoing banter fading, as Harry and Toby find each other, sit, and quietly play with Woody and Buzz puppets, whilst the Toy Story theme music plays out.Notes: We used a reversible set of school lockers on wheels, one side neat and tidy, the other dented and graffiti covered to denote the functioning school, and it’s post-closure dereliction. We also hung fluorescent strip lights over the space, to give the lighting an institutional feel when appropriate.